When discussing languages, we distinguish between those that are tonal, such as Chinese, and those that aren't, like German. In tonal languages, one word can have multiple meanings depending upon its inflection: whether the sound is clipped or drawn out, rising or falling, glottal or rounded. To non-tonal speakers, the prospect of learning such a dialect is often intimidating - not rationally so, but in the way of the unfamiliar, like a new alphabet or backwards-reading script.
In the case of English, however, I wonder how applicable this distinction really is.
A weekly sketch on the Armstrong and Miller Show features two WWI flying aces. All their scenes are shot in black and white; their mode of speech is upper-class British. There is only one glaring (and deliberate) anachronism to spoil the historicity and source the humour: despite their accents, the pair speak in current teenage slang. So when the pilots are berated for cowardice, and one replies in his Eton-voice, 'That's, like, racism, but against cowards!', it's hilarious. And part of the reason has to do with tonality: the meaning of the words hasn't changed, but the context is incorrect. Properly, such phrasing belongs to the youth of a different class and generation: said with the wrong accent, it becomes absurd. The same can also be said of black American slang - it doesn't sound right unless spoken with its originating inflection, and for a middle-aged white man to attempt a 'what up, homie?' would either be deliberately ironic or appallingly incorrect.
Think of something as simple as repeating a joke you've heard. Hit the wrong emphasis, muddle the voices, and the humour is lost. If the original teller had a different accent to you, prepare to find the process harder. Commedians as diverse as Corinne Grant, Kenneth Williams, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Dave Hughes, Rowan Atkinson, Sascha Baren-Cohen, Judith Lucy, Woody Allen and Arj Barker all generate a large part of their humour through their distinctive tones.
In conversational English, a rising or falling inflection makes the difference between asking a question and stating a fact, if it comes at the end of a sentance, or the topic under discussion, if in the middle. To cite subcultural precedent for both points: in Friends, Rachael mistakes Monica's question 'got the keys?' for a statement. Result: the pair are locked outside, as each assumes the other has the keys. Similarly, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anya brings Spike to an Initiative party. On realising where he is, Spike protests, 'You brought me here?', just as Xander accuses, 'You brought him here?' To which Spike replies, 'I just said that! Only I hit the 'here' part.' Result: inflection and emphasis make the characters concerned about two different things: Spike with being near the Initiative, and Xander with Spike being there at all.
English isn't tonal; not in the deliberate and structured way of other languages. But our multitunious slang forms, jokes, emphases and accents all contribute to certain normalities of speech, phraseologies that, beyond being merely social, cultural or geographic, have the power to change the meaning of words. And that, I think, is often overlooked.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
To Blog, Or Not To Blog
Let's face it: there's a weird allure to blogging, as evidenced by the fact that it encourages two significant behavioural contradictions. These are:
1. Private, introverted people happily display their innermost thoughts in a public forum; and
2. Individuals who would otherwise never keep diaries or aspire to writing careers, do so.
The first is, far and away, the more intriguing phenomenon. What compels people to bare their souls - and, more importantly, what makes them think that no-one will notice? It's common emotional sense to disregard the potential scrutiny of strangers, but in every online community I've been part of, uproar has occured when this blog or that is discovered by acquaintances of the creator. It's a strange problem: in treating their blogs as private diaries, writers feel free to criticise, complain about, badmouth, lament, mock or otherwise denigrate friends, family, co-workers, lovers and love-interests with the same implied impugnity as they would celebrities, sports teams or politicians. But the percieved protection is, in fact, utterly absent, and if a quick Google by Bored Person A of Blogger B's name reveals a treasure-trove of dirty goss, then problems will arise.
Personally, I see this as the writer's own lookout. On sites like livejournal, it's easy to make your posts private - that is, only viewable to those of whom you approve. Failing that, it's just as easy to write under an online handle (as most people do), leave your real name off the site (to prevent Googling) or - and here's the biggy - rename your friends when bitching about them, (as in whistleblower interviews). What stops people from doing this seems to be a variant of writer's conceit: the desire to have your (excellent) skills and viewpoints correctly attributed on the offchance that some passing bigwig wants to give you money. Beyond that, if you're going to blog critically about your nearest and dearest, non-anonymity seems foolish - although this isn't the general opinion of those caught. More often, the response is anger that whoever-it-was had read their private thoughts, as though the reader had broken the lock after rummaging through the proverbial sock drawer. Knowing you've found a friend's blog, runs this argument, imposes the courtesy of not actually reading it, especially if they haven't told you it's there. The boundaries of individual privacy in a global forum are, admittedly, still being decided, just as online ettiquite is still being learned, but in the interim, taking no measures to secure privacy and then bewailing the consequences seems akin to leaving your house permanently open and expecting not to be robbed.
As for bloggers themselves, the blank canvas has issued a siren-song to our kind throughout history. At the simplest level, we carve our names in trees and graffitti walls - a way of saying that we are here, and of hoping that, when we're gone, a part of us won't be. More than this, however, it's what makes us look longingly on rows of beautiful notebooks, pristine in their unsullied whiteness, and dream of putting them to use. Here lies potential, they seem to promise. With us, you can say anything. Your handwriting will be perfect. You'll always use the same pen. You'll never need to cross anything out, and when you're done, each book will resemble a work of art. And so, thus enlivened, we buy one, carried forward on a wave of creative enthusiasm - only to have our usage inevitably taper off. The ink smears; we draw doodles; we tear out pages, ramble on, write messily in a number of different colours and, all of a sudden, that weight of potentiality is gone, marred by the non-linear scramble of human thought.
But blogs - lovely blogs!- are digital. There is no mess to be made. We can edit without besmirching the look of the thing, change the colour in an ordered, mannerly fashion, put up pictures and alter the font. There is no bulk of unused paper to intimidate or demand thoughtful contribution: each blog is exactly as long as we make it. The sense of potentiality is never diminished by squalid appearance, and thus we keep writing, even if our entries are entirely banal. Which, ultimately, is the defining characteristic of the blogging era: no matter how many entries, authors, topics or sites, there's no guarantee that what's being said is worth the paper it isn't written on.
1. Private, introverted people happily display their innermost thoughts in a public forum; and
2. Individuals who would otherwise never keep diaries or aspire to writing careers, do so.
The first is, far and away, the more intriguing phenomenon. What compels people to bare their souls - and, more importantly, what makes them think that no-one will notice? It's common emotional sense to disregard the potential scrutiny of strangers, but in every online community I've been part of, uproar has occured when this blog or that is discovered by acquaintances of the creator. It's a strange problem: in treating their blogs as private diaries, writers feel free to criticise, complain about, badmouth, lament, mock or otherwise denigrate friends, family, co-workers, lovers and love-interests with the same implied impugnity as they would celebrities, sports teams or politicians. But the percieved protection is, in fact, utterly absent, and if a quick Google by Bored Person A of Blogger B's name reveals a treasure-trove of dirty goss, then problems will arise.
Personally, I see this as the writer's own lookout. On sites like livejournal, it's easy to make your posts private - that is, only viewable to those of whom you approve. Failing that, it's just as easy to write under an online handle (as most people do), leave your real name off the site (to prevent Googling) or - and here's the biggy - rename your friends when bitching about them, (as in whistleblower interviews). What stops people from doing this seems to be a variant of writer's conceit: the desire to have your (excellent) skills and viewpoints correctly attributed on the offchance that some passing bigwig wants to give you money. Beyond that, if you're going to blog critically about your nearest and dearest, non-anonymity seems foolish - although this isn't the general opinion of those caught. More often, the response is anger that whoever-it-was had read their private thoughts, as though the reader had broken the lock after rummaging through the proverbial sock drawer. Knowing you've found a friend's blog, runs this argument, imposes the courtesy of not actually reading it, especially if they haven't told you it's there. The boundaries of individual privacy in a global forum are, admittedly, still being decided, just as online ettiquite is still being learned, but in the interim, taking no measures to secure privacy and then bewailing the consequences seems akin to leaving your house permanently open and expecting not to be robbed.
As for bloggers themselves, the blank canvas has issued a siren-song to our kind throughout history. At the simplest level, we carve our names in trees and graffitti walls - a way of saying that we are here, and of hoping that, when we're gone, a part of us won't be. More than this, however, it's what makes us look longingly on rows of beautiful notebooks, pristine in their unsullied whiteness, and dream of putting them to use. Here lies potential, they seem to promise. With us, you can say anything. Your handwriting will be perfect. You'll always use the same pen. You'll never need to cross anything out, and when you're done, each book will resemble a work of art. And so, thus enlivened, we buy one, carried forward on a wave of creative enthusiasm - only to have our usage inevitably taper off. The ink smears; we draw doodles; we tear out pages, ramble on, write messily in a number of different colours and, all of a sudden, that weight of potentiality is gone, marred by the non-linear scramble of human thought.
But blogs - lovely blogs!- are digital. There is no mess to be made. We can edit without besmirching the look of the thing, change the colour in an ordered, mannerly fashion, put up pictures and alter the font. There is no bulk of unused paper to intimidate or demand thoughtful contribution: each blog is exactly as long as we make it. The sense of potentiality is never diminished by squalid appearance, and thus we keep writing, even if our entries are entirely banal. Which, ultimately, is the defining characteristic of the blogging era: no matter how many entries, authors, topics or sites, there's no guarantee that what's being said is worth the paper it isn't written on.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
O Tempora, O Mores
I was sceptical of Lions for Lambs when I saw it advertised at the cinemas. Somehow, the idea of watching Tom Cruise portray a rabidly militant Republican Senator pushed all the wrong buttons, and so it became a wait-until-DVD moment. Watching it tonight, I was pretty impressed: the script is fantastic, the ensemble casting spot-on, and the message powerful. I could devote many more lines to reviewing it in full, but instead, I'll focus on what hit me as I rented it today: the profound effect of terrorism on recent cinema.
Going back a few days, the thought was with me as I watched Iron Man on the big screen. In early scenes, the script goes out of its way to emphasise that Tony Stark - weapons-maker, industrialist and all-round American anti-hero - is, first and foremost, a patriot. The truth of this assertion is never questioned, but what does come under siege is the working definition of patriotism itself. At first, the description hinges on having a bigger stick than the other guy; but as Stark questions the logic of producing arms to save the world, this view becomes unstuck.
Here as elsewhere, the choice is to support the system for the principles on which it rests, or abandon the system when those principles cease to be applied. Moreso than the films, it's a central theme to the Star Wars comics that sculpt the context for Episodes II and III: the dilemma of Jedi defending a morally indefensible Republic for the sake of its democratic ideals. When the system breaks down, can it be repaired from the inside out, or must a new structure replace it? We're getting away from terrorism, but only into related areas. Like it or not, the moral, social and political dilemmas of our time are being played out in our cinemas, and not always with the intended effect.
From the outset, some films make their agenda plain. V for Vendetta is an obvious example, as are Syriana, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men and Apocalypto, but the retconning of older stories to incorporate modern terrorism is, in one sense, more significant. Batman Begins is an interesting case in point: beyond the corruption of Gotham City, Raz Al-Ghoul is best described as a corporate jihadi, while Daniel Craig's new-look 007 in Casino Royale faced terrorists and their backers rather than the traditional communists. We might count S.P.E.C.T.R.E as a terrorist organisation, but the definition of modern terrorism is not nearly so - for lack of a better word - corporate. It is no longer the evil henchmen, white cats and grey jumpsuits so aptly parodied by Dr Evil in Austin Powers: it is dirty, violent, random and brutally personal. Even Bruce Willis, repraising his role as John MacLean in Die Hard 4.0, is fighting a different breed of terrorist to his original enemies. Pure profit is no longer the incentive: instead, the effect is mayhem, and the motive ideological.
Periphary but related themes are the mistrust of government, corporate crimes, lies in the media, socio-political relations and the ubiquitous question of 'religon', usually translated as 'Islam vs. Everything Else.' Notably, The Kingdom failed spectacularly at all of the above, the bitter irony of which being that the writers were trying to protest exactly the ignorance they ended up committing. The first and last scenes achieve what the intervening hours utterly bungle: an effort at painting Saudis and Americans as equally (morally) human. 300 deserves a longer critique for similar reasons, but the practical upshot is the Battle of Thermopylae being used as an allegory for the military triumph of Western democracy over the Middle East. Babel is a better, if ultimately disturbing, example: there are always people on both ends of a bullet, it says, and neither of them needs must be a monster.
There are differing interpretations of all these films, but what can't be denied is that Hollywood, by and large, is trying to come to grips with terrorism and its consequences. How their efforts are viewed now as distinct from the reaction of future historians is yet to be seen, but with the privilege of hindsight, what influence might we see? Stylistically, all films belong to a certain era, and it seems extremely doubtful that a new Fight Club could be made too soon: a story in which our generation lacks a defining war, where violent terrorism is espoused by the protagonists, and where - in the triumphal, final moments - Western civilisation literally collapses, skyscrapers emblazoned with an ironic smiley face tumbling into rubble as the anarchist lovers look on and grin. Instead, we have Southland Tales, where Armageddon is pre-empted by left-wing terrorism, and a chilling reversal of T.S. Elliott's famous line prevails throughout:
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a whimper, but with a bang.
Going back a few days, the thought was with me as I watched Iron Man on the big screen. In early scenes, the script goes out of its way to emphasise that Tony Stark - weapons-maker, industrialist and all-round American anti-hero - is, first and foremost, a patriot. The truth of this assertion is never questioned, but what does come under siege is the working definition of patriotism itself. At first, the description hinges on having a bigger stick than the other guy; but as Stark questions the logic of producing arms to save the world, this view becomes unstuck.
Here as elsewhere, the choice is to support the system for the principles on which it rests, or abandon the system when those principles cease to be applied. Moreso than the films, it's a central theme to the Star Wars comics that sculpt the context for Episodes II and III: the dilemma of Jedi defending a morally indefensible Republic for the sake of its democratic ideals. When the system breaks down, can it be repaired from the inside out, or must a new structure replace it? We're getting away from terrorism, but only into related areas. Like it or not, the moral, social and political dilemmas of our time are being played out in our cinemas, and not always with the intended effect.
From the outset, some films make their agenda plain. V for Vendetta is an obvious example, as are Syriana, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men and Apocalypto, but the retconning of older stories to incorporate modern terrorism is, in one sense, more significant. Batman Begins is an interesting case in point: beyond the corruption of Gotham City, Raz Al-Ghoul is best described as a corporate jihadi, while Daniel Craig's new-look 007 in Casino Royale faced terrorists and their backers rather than the traditional communists. We might count S.P.E.C.T.R.E as a terrorist organisation, but the definition of modern terrorism is not nearly so - for lack of a better word - corporate. It is no longer the evil henchmen, white cats and grey jumpsuits so aptly parodied by Dr Evil in Austin Powers: it is dirty, violent, random and brutally personal. Even Bruce Willis, repraising his role as John MacLean in Die Hard 4.0, is fighting a different breed of terrorist to his original enemies. Pure profit is no longer the incentive: instead, the effect is mayhem, and the motive ideological.
Periphary but related themes are the mistrust of government, corporate crimes, lies in the media, socio-political relations and the ubiquitous question of 'religon', usually translated as 'Islam vs. Everything Else.' Notably, The Kingdom failed spectacularly at all of the above, the bitter irony of which being that the writers were trying to protest exactly the ignorance they ended up committing. The first and last scenes achieve what the intervening hours utterly bungle: an effort at painting Saudis and Americans as equally (morally) human. 300 deserves a longer critique for similar reasons, but the practical upshot is the Battle of Thermopylae being used as an allegory for the military triumph of Western democracy over the Middle East. Babel is a better, if ultimately disturbing, example: there are always people on both ends of a bullet, it says, and neither of them needs must be a monster.
There are differing interpretations of all these films, but what can't be denied is that Hollywood, by and large, is trying to come to grips with terrorism and its consequences. How their efforts are viewed now as distinct from the reaction of future historians is yet to be seen, but with the privilege of hindsight, what influence might we see? Stylistically, all films belong to a certain era, and it seems extremely doubtful that a new Fight Club could be made too soon: a story in which our generation lacks a defining war, where violent terrorism is espoused by the protagonists, and where - in the triumphal, final moments - Western civilisation literally collapses, skyscrapers emblazoned with an ironic smiley face tumbling into rubble as the anarchist lovers look on and grin. Instead, we have Southland Tales, where Armageddon is pre-empted by left-wing terrorism, and a chilling reversal of T.S. Elliott's famous line prevails throughout:
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a whimper, but with a bang.
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